Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University

In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power.

Key components of authoritarianism include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or encouraging political violence; and curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.

Since he took office for a second time, President Donald Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, named other cities run by Democrats as targets for military intervention, deployed masked and unidentifiable agents in immigration raids, explicitly threatened the city of Chicago with a military invasion and used government power to persecute his perceived political enemies.

But many journalistic outlets have yet to call him what he is – an authoritarian.

As a political communication scholar, I study how media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world.

Because authoritarianism is most visible in hindsight, people often don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, notes that when it comes to democratic backsliding, “there are no bright lines … people often find out the world they’re in after the fact.”

That’s why it’s particularly important for journalists to label authoritarians as such when the evidence warrants. In Trump’s case, I believe the U.S. is well past that point.

Trump’s authoritarianism

Scholars with expertise in authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book “How Democracies Die” describes how, during the 2016 campaign and his first presidential term, Trump exhibited the key indicators of authoritarian behavior. He undermined the legitimacy of elections Republicans lost, baselessly described his rivals as criminals, refused to unambiguously condemn violence committed by his supporters, and threatened to punish critics and members of the media.

Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that “no other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Richard Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.”

That intensified when Trump returned to office in 2025.

Levitsky and Lucan A. Way documented Trump’s “path to American authoritarianism” for the journal Foreign Affairs in early 2025. In March, Levitsky told New York magazine that things were going worse than even he expected, asserting, “We’re pretty screwed.”

Levitsky is not alone in that view. In a February 2025 survey of political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch – an academic organization that researches democratic health – the percentage of scholars plummeted who said that the U.S. “mostly or fully” meets the standard for democratic health.

That was before Trump, via social media, promised to go to war in Chicago. When asked about his post, Trump said, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” but he did not back away from the intent to deploy troops against the wishes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

Pritzker responded to Trump’s post by noting, “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

On Sept. 7, 2025, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein itemized some of Trump’s authoritarian actions, concluding, “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”

What journalists have been saying

Although other opinion journalists like Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, Jonathan Chait and nearly every MSNBC anchor have been labeling Trump an authoritarian for some time, much hard news coverage of the Trump administration has not.

When Trump deployed troops to Washington, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic dismissed it as “farcical” and “not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.”

A CNN analysis similarly minimized the action as a “gambit,” a “distraction” and a “neat political trick.” CNN characterized concerns about authoritarianism as “hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does” and asserted that such reports “don’t really help voters understand what is going on.”

The New York Times’ Aug. 3 story by Peter Baker on Trump’s “tendency to suppress facts he doesn’t like and promote his own version of reality” bore a headline that read “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” suggesting that his actions were authoritarian without applying the label to Trump directly.

During the April 14, 2025, broadcast of CNN News Central, anchor Jessica Dean spoke with Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor participating in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Bowie repeatedly called Trump an authoritarian for illegally freezing federal research funding awarded to Harvard.

When Dean noted that the “Trump administration says it’s doing all of this in an effort to combat antisemitism on campus,” Bowie responded that “antisemitism is really just a pretext for what is really an authoritarian attack on higher education.” Federal Judge Allison Burroughs later agreed with that interpretation in her ruling against the Trump administration.

Dean, however, sidestepped that interpretation, saying, “What I’m hearing is you think that enough was done to combat antisemitism, that this is about something else.”

Competitive authoritarianism

There are reasons why journalistic outlets may hesitate to identify the “something else” as authoritarianism, or portray it as a looming threat rather than a current danger.

Trump’s propensity to sue journalists, and large media corporations’ decisions to settle even when the law was on their side, have likely made journalists and editors hesitant to describe Trump as an authoritarian.

And the imperative for balance sometimes results in a “both sides-ism” that misrepresents what authoritarianism actually looks like.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech asserting Trump’s military response to immigration protests in California was an assault on democracy, the New York Times covered it, quoting Newsom at length about the danger Trump presented. The article also quoted Republicans who alleged that Newsom’s public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic made him “the ultimate authoritarian.”

But the particular nature of the authoritarianism the U.S is facing in the 21st century also plays a role.

Levitsky and Way have written about “competitive authoritarianism,” a new version of authoritarianism that doesn’t look like 20th-century fascism.

Many laypeople associate the word authoritarianism with military dictatorships and totalitarian rule. In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, there’s a constant push and pull between democratic and autocratic impulses. Levitsky and Way write that elections are held, but they may not be fair. The authoritarian regime uses power gained democratically to break democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions and tilt the playing field in its own favor.

Constraining free speech

Journalistic norms of independence can pressure even ethical journalists into acquiescence to competitive authoritarianism because they want to avoid looking partisan when all coverage that falls outside the authoritarian’s approved message gets characterized as resistance.

Paramount settled what one free speech advocate described as a “widely derided lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against ’60 Minutes,’” and CBS recently pledged to stop editing recorded interviews on “Face the Nation” after complaints lodged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Paramount and CBS cases suggest that, left unchallenged, a competitive authoritarian leader will use their leverage to influence what should be independent journalism.

Words matter. And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.

Karrin Vasby Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian – and why that matters for democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy-263778

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Henry F. Fradella, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

President Donald Trump recently signed two executive orders targeting “cashless bail,” the policies that permit the release of people arrested for crimes pending trial without requiring them to pay money.

One executive order directs arrestees in Washington, D.C. to be “held in Federal custody to the fullest extent permissible under applicable law.” The other order calls for the withholding of federal funds to states that “substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody” for many offenses.

Cashless bail does not mean that everyone is simply released unconditionally to await trial. Instead, judges have the ability to detain people who pose a specific threat to another person or the community. And they can impose conditions on those who are released, including stringent measures like electronic monitoring.

Trump has criticized cashless bail policies for threatening public safety because they can release dangerous people from detention.

As legal and criminal justice scholars, we have studied bail reforms across the United States.

We have found that jurisdictions that reduce reliance on cash bail can maintain public safety. And they can also curtail mass pretrial incarceration that overwhelmingly locks up people who are too poor to afford bail. That includes three jurisdictions that we examine in detail below: Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Illinois.

The rise of bail bonds

Bail is a promise by an accused person to show up at court hearings in exchange for being released from custody pending the resolution of criminal charges.

In many U.S. jurisdictions, however, people pledge money or property as collateral for their pretrial release. But some people are released unconditionally, referred to as release on their own recognizance. Others are denied pretrial release altogether because they pose a risk of flight, a risk of failing to appear, or pose a danger to the community.

Historically, the bail system worked on promises and one’s reputation, not money. Money bail became more common around the turn of the 20th century with the rise of commercial bail bonds, in which a bail bond business would front the bail money, charging the arrestee a portion of the bail amount as a fee.

This created a system in which people with money could buy their pretrial freedom for many crimes – even serious felonies. Conversely, between 60% and 90% of people remained jailed despite the availability of bail bonds. This was not because they were dangerous, but because they lacked the financial resources to come up with the 10% of their bail amount to purchase their pretrial freedom.

The problems with cash bail

On any given day, approximately 664,000 people are locked up in jails in the United States. Only about 30% of these people are serving sentences following criminal convictions. The remaining 70% in jail are awaiting trial.

Typically, this is not because a court has judged them a risk to public safety. And usually it’s not because a judge decided they are unlikely to appear at scheduled court hearings.

Instead, they remain in jail because they cannot pay the money bail that has been set in their cases. This can have serious or even tragic consequences, such as lost homes and jobs, and even suicides. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death in jails, and pretrial detainees are six times more likely to die by suicide than those serving jail time after convictions.

A 2012 study in New York City found that “even when bail is set comparatively low – at $500 or less, as it is in one-third of nonfelony cases – only 15% of defendants are able to come up with the money to avoid jail.” In 2017, the jailing of people who could not afford bail cost taxpayers US$38 million each day – an amount that exceeds $50 million today, adjusted for inflation.

And it has allowed commercial bail businesses – and the nine insurance companies that back the roughly 30 corporations that underwrite more than $14 billion in bail bonds issued each year – to earn profits in excess of $2.4 billion annually.

Conversely, money bail systems allow people with financial means, even those who might be dangerous or pose a genuine risk of flight, to be released because they can afford to post bail.

Bail reform in Washington

Washington abolished cash bail in the early 1990s. The city replaced it with a system that overwhelmingly pairs pretrial release with levels of supervision tied to the risk that a court determines a defendant might pose. As a result, roughly 87% of all people arrested in Washington are released pending trial without needing to pay or pledge any money.

Despite the lack of money bail, the city has experienced high court appearance rates and low reoffending rates. Between 2019 and 2024, 89% of defendants awaiting trial in the city showed up to their scheduled court appearances – and 90% remained arrest-free. Even among those accused of violent offenses, 98% were not rearrested for violent crimes while on pretrial release.

Washington shows that when people are given the tools and reminders they need, they are overwhelmingly likely to comply with court obligations. That includes phone calls, text messages and email reminders about court dates or access to pretrial services. Moreover, these results illustrate that alternatives to cash bail can function effectively, without compromising public safety.

The Illinois and New Jersey experiences

New Jersey overhauled its bail system
in 2017 by virtually eliminating cash bail. The state replaced it with a framework that relies on judicial assessments and pretrial monitoring to decide whether defendants should be detained or released.

Within two years of New Jersey’s bail reforms, the state’s pretrial jail population decreased by roughly 44%. Most notably, the state did this by reducing the number of defendants held in jail for more than a day or two.

This reduction was not accompanied by an increase in failures to appear in court or in new criminal charges.

A recent Drexel University–Boston University study echoed those findings, confirming that the decline in incarceration came without increases in gun violence. The study also found that the number of people held on low bail amounts – $2,500 or less – fell sharply, from more than 12% of the jail population in 2012 to just 0.4% by 2021.

Early data analyses after Illinois eliminated cash bail in September 2023 show that jail populations declined with no uptick in failure-to-appear rates.

Further, violent crime and property crime rates in Cook County have decreased since the law took effect, including a 15% reduction in Chicago.

Broader considerations

In 2024, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, analyzed data from 33 cities, comparing 22 that had enacted bail reforms with 11 that had not. The researchers found that there was no relationship between bail reform and crime rates. When combined with the data from Washington, New Jersey and Illinois, it seems clear that jurisdictions can protect public safety while also reducing unnecessary and harmful pretrial detention.

In New Jersey, for example, thousands of people – many from communities of color – were able to remain employed and housed while awaiting trial. Rather than destabilizing people’s lives by unnecessary incarceration, the state contributed to greater stability for them, their families and communities.

The question moving forward is how to build on these successes.

As policymakers consider next steps, these empirically supported results can provide guidance. They provide evidence that cashless bail is not a threat but an opportunity for fairer, smarter justice.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bail reforms across the US have shown that releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety – https://theconversation.com/bail-reforms-across-the-us-have-shown-that-releasing-people-pretrial-doesnt-harm-public-safety-264448

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Aki Ishida, Professor and Director, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design, Washington University in St. Louis

The word “local” has become synonymous with sustainability, whether it’s food, clothes or the materials used to construct buildings. But while consumers can probably go to a local lumberyard to buy lumber from sustainably grown trees cut at nearby sawmills, no one asks for local glass.

If they did, it would be hard to give an answer.

The raw materials that go into glass – silica sand, soda ash and limestone – are natural, but the sources of those materials are rarely known to the buyer.

The process by which sand becomes sheets of glass is often far from transparent. The sand, which makes up over 70% of glass, could come from a faraway riverbed, lakeshore or inland limestone outcrop. Sand with at least 95% silica content is called silica sand, and only the purest is suitable for architectural glass production. Such sand is found in limited areas.

If the glass is colorless, its potential sources are even more limited, because colorless low-iron glass – popularized by Apple’s flagship stores and luxury towers around the world – requires 99% pure silica sand.

Glass production in Venice

The mysteries of glass production have historic precedent that can be traced back to trade secrets of the Venetian Empire.

Venice, particularly the island of Murano, became the center for glass production largely due to its strategic location for importing raw materials and production know-how and exporting coveted glass objects.

From the 11th to the 16th centuries, the secrets of glassmaking were protected by the Venetians until three glassmakers were smuggled out by King Louis XIV of France, who applied the technology to create the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.

Venice was an otherwise unlikely location for glassmaking.

Neither the primary materials of sand and soda ash (sodium carbonate) nor the firewood for the medieval Venetian glassmakers were found in the city’s immediate vicinity. They were transported from the riverbeds of the Ticino River in Switzerland and the Agide River, which flows from the Austria-Switzerland border to the Adriatic Sea south of Venice. Soda ash, which is needed to lower the melting point of silica sand, was brought from Syria and Egypt.

So Venetian glass production was not local; it was dependent on precious resources imported from afar on ships.

Rising demand for low-iron, seamless glass

In the past few decades, low-iron glass, known for its colorlessness, has become the contemporary symbol of high-end architecture. The glass appears to disappear.

Low-iron glass is made from ultrapure sand that is low in iron oxide. Iron causes the green tint seen in ordinary glass. In architecture, low-iron glass doesn’t affect the performance – only the appearance. But it is prized.

In the U.S., this type of sand is found in a few locations, primarily in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, where sand as white and fine as sugar – thus called saccharoidal – is mined from St. Peter sandstone. Other locations where it can be found around the world include Queensland in Australia and parts of China. Less pure sand can be purified by methods such as acid washing or magnetic separation.

Perhaps no corporation has popularized low-iron and seamless glass in architecture more than the technology giant Apple.

Glass has become fundamentally linked with Apple’s products and architecture, including its flagship stores’ expensive and daring experiments in architectural uses of glass.

Apple’s first showroom, completed in Soho in New York in 2002, showcased all-glass stairs that were strengthened with hurricane- and bullet-resistant plastic interlayers sandwiched between five sheets of glass. The treads attach to all glass walls with a hockey puck-size titanium hardware, making both the glass stairs and the shoppers appear to float.

The company’s iconic flagship store near New York’s Central Park is an all-glass cube measuring 32½ feet (10 meters) on each side and serving as a vestibule to the store below. The first version was completed in 2006 using 90 panels, which was a technical feat. Then, in 2011, Apple reconstructed the cube in the same location, same size, but with only 15 panels, minimizing the number of seams and hardware while maximizing transparency.

Today, low-iron glass has become the standard for high-profile architecture and those who can afford it, including the “pencil towers” in Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row.

Glass’s climate impact

Glass walls common in high-rise buildings today have other drawbacks. They help to heat up the room during increasingly hot summers and contribute to heat loss in winter, increasing dependence on artificial cooling and heating.

The glassmaking process is energy intensive and relies on nonrenewable resources.

To bring sand to its molten state, the furnace must be heated to over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celisus) for as long as 50 hours, which requires burning fossil fuels such as natural gas, releasing greenhouse gases. Once heated to that temperature, the furnace runs 24/7 and is rarely shut down.

The soda ash and limestone also release carbon dioxide during melting. Moreover, glass production requires mining or producing nonrenewable natural resources such as sand, soda ash, lime and fuel. Transporting them further increases emissions.

Production and fabrication of extra-large glass panels rely on specialized equipment and occur only at a limited number of plants in the world, meaning transportation increases the carbon footprint.

Architectural glass is also difficult to recycle, largely due to the labor involved in separating glass from the building assembly.

Although glass is touted as infinitely recyclable, only 6% of architectural glass is downcycled into glass products that require less purity and precision, and almost none is recycled into architectural glass. The rest ends up in landfills.

The increasing demand for glass that is colorless, extra large and seamless contributes to glass’s sustainability problem.

How can we make glass more sustainable?

There are ways to reduce glass’s environmental footprint.

Researchers and companies are working on new types of glass that could lower its climate impact, such as using materials that lower the amount of heat necessary to make glass. Replacing natural gas, typically used in glassmaking, with less-polluting power sources can also reduce emissions.

Low-e coatings, a thin coat of silver sprayed onto a glass surface, can help reduce the amount of heat that reaches a building’s interior by reflecting both the visible light and heat, but the coating can’t fully eliminate solar heat gain.

People can also alter their standards and accept smaller and less ultraclear panels. Think of the green tint not as impure but natural.

Aki Ishida does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Where does your glass come from? – https://theconversation.com/where-does-your-glass-come-from-263421

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brian W. Stone, Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Boise State University

When OpenAI released “study mode” in July 2025, the company touted ChatGPT’s educational benefits. “When ChatGPT is prompted to teach or tutor, it can significantly improve academic performance,” the company’s vice president of education told reporters at the product’s launch. But any dedicated teacher would be right to wonder: Is this just marketing, or does scholarly research really support such claims?

While generative AI tools are moving into classrooms at lightning speed, robust research on the question at hand hasn’t moved nearly as fast. Some early studies have shown benefits for certain groups such as computer programming students and English language learners. And there have been a number of other optimistic studies on AI in education, such as one published in the journal Nature in May 2025 suggesting that chatbots may aid learning and higher-order thinking. But scholars in the field have pointed to significant methodological weaknesses in many of these research papers.

Other studies have painted a grimmer picture, suggesting that AI may impair performance or cognitive abilities such as critical thinking skills. One paper showed that the more a student used ChatGPT while learning, the worse they did later on similar tasks when ChatGPT wasn’t available.

In other words, early research is only beginning to scratch the surface of how this technology will truly affect learning and cognition in the long run. Where else can we look for clues? As a cognitive psychologist who has studied how college students are using AI, I have found that my field offers valuable guidance for identifying when AI can be a brain booster and when it risks becoming a brain drain.

Skill comes from effort

Cognitive psychologists have argued that our thoughts and decisions are the result of two processing modes, commonly denoted as System 1 and System 2.

The former is a system of pattern matching, intuition and habit. It is fast and automatic, requiring little conscious attention or cognitive effort. Many of our routine daily activities – getting dressed, making coffee and riding a bike to work or school – fall into this category. System 2, on the other hand, is generally slow and deliberate, requiring more conscious attention and sometimes painful cognitive effort, but often yields more robust outputs.

We need both of these systems, but gaining knowledge and mastering new skills depend heavily on System 2. Struggle, friction and mental effort are crucial to the cognitive work of learning, remembering and strengthening connections in the brain. Every time a confident cyclist gets on a bike, they rely on the hard-won pattern recognition in their System 1 that they previously built up through many hours of effortful System 2 work spent learning to ride. You don’t get mastery and you can’t chunk information efficiently for higher-level processing without first putting in the cognitive effort and strain.

I tell my students the brain is a lot like a muscle: It takes genuine hard work to see gains. Without challenging that muscle, it won’t grow bigger.

What if a machine does the work for you?

Now imagine a robot that accompanies you to the gym and lifts the weights for you, no strain needed on your part. Before long, your own muscles will have atrophied and you’ll become reliant on the robot at home even for simple tasks like moving a heavy box.

AI, used poorly – to complete a quiz or write an essay, say – lets students bypass the very thing they need to develop knowledge and skills. It takes away the mental workout.

Using technology to effectively offload cognitive workouts can have a detrimental effect on learning and memory and can cause people to misread their own understanding or abilities, leading to what psychologists call metacognitive errors. Research has shown that habitually offloading car navigation to GPS may impair spatial memory and that using an external source like Google to answer questions makes people overconfident in their own personal knowledge and memory.

Are there similar risks when students hand off cognitive tasks to AI? One study found that students researching a topic using ChatGPT instead of a traditional web search had lower cognitive load during the task – they didn’t have to think as hard – and produced worse reasoning about the topic they had researched. Surface-level use of AI may mean less cognitive burden in the moment, but this is akin to letting a robot do your gym workout for you. It ultimately leads to poorer thinking skills.

In another study, students using AI to revise their essays scored higher than those revising without AI, often by simply copying and pasting sentences from ChatGPT. But these students showed no more actual knowledge gain or knowledge transfer than their peers who worked without it. The AI group also engaged in fewer rigorous System 2 thinking processes. The authors warn that such “metacognitive laziness” may prompt short-term performance improvements but also lead to the stagnation of long-term skills.

Offloading can be useful once foundations are in place. But those foundations can’t be formed unless your brain does the initial work necessary to encode, connect and understand the issues you’re trying to master.

Using AI to support learning

Returning to the gym metaphor, it may be useful for students to think of AI as a personal trainer who can keep them on task by tracking and scaffolding learning and pushing them to work harder. AI has great potential as a scalable learning tool, an individualized tutor with a vast knowledge base that never sleeps.

AI technology companies are seeking to design just that: the ultimate tutor. In addition to OpenAI’s entry into education, in April 2025 Anthropic released its learning mode for Claude. These models are supposed to engage in Socratic dialogue, to pose questions and provide hints, rather than just giving the answers.

Early research indicates AI tutors can be beneficial but introduce problems as well. For example, one study found high school students reviewing math with ChatGPT performed worse than students who didn’t use AI. Some students used the base version and others a customized tutor version that gave hints without revealing answers. When students took an exam later without AI access, those who’d used base ChatGPT did much worse than a group who’d studied without AI, yet they didn’t realize their performance was worse. Those who’d studied with the tutor bot did no better than students who’d reviewed without AI, but they mistakenly thought they had done better. So AI didn’t help, and it introduced metacognitive errors.

Even as tutor modes are refined and improved, students have to actively select that mode and, for now, also have to play along, deftly providing context and guiding the chatbot away from worthless, low-level questions or sycophancy.

The latter issues may be fixed with better design, system prompts and custom interfaces. But the temptation of using default-mode AI to avoid hard work will continue to be a more fundamental and classic problem of teaching, course design and motivating students to avoid shortcuts that undermine their cognitive workout.

As with other complex technologies such as smartphones, the internet or even writing itself, it will take more time for researchers to fully understand the true range of AI’s effects on cognition and learning. In the end, the picture will likely be a nuanced one that depends heavily on context and use case.

But what we know about learning tells us that deep knowledge and mastery of a skill will always require a genuine cognitive workout – with or without AI.

Brian W. Stone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How does AI affect how we learn? A cognitive psychologist explains why you learn when the work is hard – https://theconversation.com/how-does-ai-affect-how-we-learn-a-cognitive-psychologist-explains-why-you-learn-when-the-work-is-hard-262863

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Scott Malia, Associate Professor of Theatre, College of the Holy Cross

First it was referred to as a “mysterious illness.” Later it was called “gay cancer,” “gay plague” and “GRID,” an acronym for gay-related immune deficiency. Most egregiously, some called it “4H disease” – shorthand for “homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs and Haitians,” the populations most afflicted in the early days.

While these names were ultimately replaced by AIDS – and later, after the virus was identified, by HIV – they reflected two key realities about AIDS at the time: a lack of understanding about the disease and its strong association with gay men.

Although the first report in the mainstream press about AIDS appeared in 1981, the first movies to explore the disease wouldn’t come for four more years.

When the feature film “Buddies” and the television film “An Early Frost” premiered 40 years ago, in the fall of 1985, AIDS had belatedly been breaking into the public consciousness.

Earlier that year, the first off-Broadway plays about AIDS opened: “As Is” by William Hoffman and “The Normal Heart” by writer and activist Larry Kramer. That summer, actor Rock Hudson disclosed that he had AIDS, becoming the first major celebrity to do so. Hudson, who died in October 1985, was a friend of President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan. Reagan, who had been noticeably silent on the subject of the disease, would go on to make his first – albeit brief – public remarks about AIDS in September 1985.

Five days before Reagan’s speech, “Buddies,” an independent film made for US$27,000 and shot in nine days, premiered at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Sept. 12, 1985.

A film on the front lines

If you haven’t heard of “Buddies,” that’s not surprising; the film mostly played art houses and festivals before disappearing.

Its filmmaker, Arthur J. Bressan Jr., was best known for his gay pornographic films, although he’d also made documentaries such as “Gay USA.” “Buddies” would go on to reach a wider audience thanks to a 2018 video release by Vinegar Syndrome, a distribution company that focuses on restoring cult cinema, exploitation films and other obscure titles.

It was inspired by the real-life buddies program at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an organization Kramer co-founded. At the time, many people dying of the disease had been rejected by family and friends, so a buddy might be the only person who visited a terminal AIDS patient.

The film feels like a play, in that most of the movie takes place in a single room and features just two characters: a naive young gay man named David and a young AIDS patient named Robert. Over the course of the film, the characters open up about their lives and their fears about the growing epidemic. It also includes a sex scene – something other early AIDS films completely avoided – in which David and Robert engage in safer sex.

AIDS packaged for the masses

The remarkably frank and intimate approach to the epidemic in “Buddies” contrasts sharply to the television film “An Early Frost,” which premiered on NBC on Nov. 11, 1985.

The film’s protagonist is a successful Chicago lawyer named Michael who hasn’t come out to his family, much to the distress of his long-term partner, Peter. When Michael finds out he has AIDS, he’s forced to come out to his parents, both as gay and as having AIDS.

Much of the film deals with Michael’s self-acceptance and his attempts to mend his relationships. Yet the production of “An Early Frost” was fraught with concerns about depicting both homosexuality and AIDS. Unlike David and Robert, Michael and Peter show no physical affection – they barely touch each other.

Knowledge of AIDS was still evolving – a test for HIV was approved in March 1985 – so screenwriters and life partners Daniel Lipman and Ron Cowen went through 13 revisions of the script. The real-life fears and misconceptions about how AIDS could and could not be transmitted were central to the storyline, adding extra pressure to be accurate in the face of evolving understanding of the virus.

Despite losing NBC $500,000 in advertisers, “An Early Frost” drew 34 million viewers and was showered with Emmy nominations the following year.

A quilt of stories emerges

“Buddies” and “An Early Frost” opened up AIDS and HIV as subject matters for film and television.

They begat two lanes of HIV storytelling that continue to this day.

The first is an approach geared to mainstream audiences that tends to avoid controversial issues such as sex or religion and instead focuses on characters who grapple with both the illness and the stigma of the virus.

The second is an indie approach that’s often more confrontational, irreverent and angry at the injustice and indifference AIDS patients faced.

The former approach is seen in 1993’s “Philadelphia,” which earned Tom Hanks his first Oscar. The critically and commercially successful film shares a number of story points with “An Early Frost”: Hanks’ character, a big-city lawyer, finds out he is HIV positive and must confront bias head-on. HIV also features prominently in later films such as “Precious” (2009) and “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013), both of which, like “Philadelphia,” became awards darlings.

The edgier, more critical approach can be seen in the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s, a film movement that developed as a response to the epidemic. Gregg Araki’s “The Living End” (1992) is a key film in the movment: It tells the story of two HIV-positive men who become pseudo-vigilantes in the wake of their diagnoses.

Somewhere in between is “Longtime Companion” (1990), which was the first film about AIDS to receive a wide release and tracks the impact of the epidemic on a fictional group of gay men throughout the 1980s. The film was written by gay playwright and screenwriter Craig Lucas and directed by Norman Rene, who died of AIDS six years after the film’s release.

Studios still leery

In many ways, television is where the real breakthroughs have happened and continue to happen.

The first television episode to deal with AIDS appeared on the medical drama “St. Elsewhere” in 1983; AIDS was also the subject of episodes in the sitcoms “Mr. Belvedere,” “The Golden Girls” and “Designing Women.” “Killing All the Right People” was the title of the latter’s special episode – a phrase the show’s writer and co-creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason heard while her mother was being treated for AIDS.

More recently, producer Ryan Murphy has made a cottage industry of representations of queer people, particularly those with HIV. His stage revivals of “The Normal Heart” and Mart Crowley’s 1968 play “The Boys in the Band” were later adapted into films for television and streaming. He also produced “Pose,” a three-season series about drag ball culture in the 1980s that stars queer characters of color, several of whom are HIV positive.

Yet for all of these strides, representations of HIV in film are still hard to come by. In fact, out of the 256 films released by major distributors in 2024, the number of HIV-postive characters amounted to … zero.

Perhaps movie studios are less willing to risk even a character with HIV given the drop in movie theater attendance in the age of streaming.

If you think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that people might not want to be seen going to the theater to watch a film about characters with HIV, the results of a 2021 GLAAD survey may surprise you.

It found that the stigma around HIV is still very high, particularly for HIV-positive people working in schools and hospitals. One-third of respondents were unaware that medication is available to prevent the transmission of HIV. More than half didn’t know that HIV-positive people can reach undetectable status and not transmit the virus to others.

Another important finding from the survey: Only about half of the nonqueer respondents had seen a TV show or film about someone with HIV.

This reflects both the progress made since “Buddies” and “An Early Frost” and also why these films still matter today. They were released at a time when there was almost no cultural representation of HIV, and misinformation and disinformation were rampant. There have been so many advances, in both the treatment of HIV and its visibility in popular culture. That visibility still matters, because there’s still much more than can be done to end the stigma.

Scott Malia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 40 years ago, the first AIDS movies forced Americans to confront a disease they didn’t want to see – https://theconversation.com/40-years-ago-the-first-aids-movies-forced-americans-to-confront-a-disease-they-didnt-want-to-see-262421

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Patrick Aguilar, Managing Director of Health, Washington University in St. Louis

The share of doctors who belong to unions is rising quickly at a time when organized labor is losing ground with other professions. The Conversation U.S. asked Patrick Aguilar, a Washington University in St. Louis pulmonologist and management professor, to explain why the number of physicians joining unions is growing – a trend that appears likely to continue.

How long have there been health care unions?

U.S. nurses first joined labor unions in 1896. Today, about 1 in 5 registered nurses are union members, twice the rate of unionization in all professions.

The first physicians’ union formed in 1934, when hospital residents – doctors in training who tended then, as now, to be paid relatively little and forced to work long hours – organized to demand higher pay and shorter shifts. For the next eight decades, those unions grew slowly.

But the pace has picked up. The share of doctors who belong to unions rose from 5.7% in 2014 to 7.2% in 2019. By 2024, an estimated 8% of physicians were union members.

This swift growth contrasts with declining union membership overall. The share of American workers in unions fell by more than half, from 20.1% to 9.9%, between 1983 and 2024.

Residents and interns are particularly interested in joining unions. Nearly 2 in 3 have said they might want to join one. Membership in the Committee of Interns and Residents, a chapter of Service Employees International Union, rose by nearly 14% to 37,000 between late 2024 and early 2025. By September 2025, the union was saying that its ranks had grown to more than 40,000.

Several other U.S. unions also represent physicians. Doctors Council, which is also affiliated with Service Employees International Union, represents physicians, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and veterinarians. The Union of American Physicians and Dentists, part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, says it has at least 7,000 members.

Aren’t doctors too rich for labor organizing?

Just like labor unions that represent electricians or teachers, unions that represent doctors seek better working conditions, higher pay and better benefits for their members. While the typical U.S. doctor earns nearly US$240,000 a year, about four times what the typical American worker makes, their compensation varies widely depending on their medical specialty. A pediatric surgeon, for example, can earn twice as much as a pediatrician.

Despite their high wages, according to a poll of over 1,000 physicians, as many as 15% of physicians said they had cut back on their personal expenses, and 40% expected to delay retirement for financial reasons. The education and training required to become a doctor is lengthy and expensive, often leading to large amounts of student debt.

Additionally, many physicians are compensated for patient visits and not for work done outside of the exam room. The extra hours needed to document work, address patient concerns and maintain continuing education are often uncompensated, significantly reducing physicians’ effective hourly earnings.

Other unions advocate for higher wages and better conditions in well-compensated professions.

The National Football League Players Association is an example of a union with highly paid members that still advocates for their increased compensation. NFL players now earn a median salary of $860,000.

Baseball players earn even more. They have a median salary of $1.35 million, and all of the players are represented by the Major League Baseball Players Association, a union.

Why would doctors join unions?

An American Medical Association survey conducted in 1983 found that 75.8% of physicians were owners of their primary clinical practice. Four decades later, nearly 80% of physicians are employed by health care systems or other corporations.

As employees, physicians are now eligible to unionize and may have an interest in doing so to bargain with employers who set working conditions and compensation.

Residents and fellows, on the other hand, have been employees for much longer because of the structure of their training programs. Residents work longer hours, are paid significantly less and are obligated to complete their training programs in order to attain specialty certification.

These differences help explain the longer history of labor organizing for physician trainees.

Surveys point to several other possible causes besides concerns about employers.

An American Medical Association survey of 13,000 physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants in 2022 reflected rates of burnout exceeding 50% in several key specialties. More than half of those responding said they felt undervalued by their employer.

In 2023, the University of Michigan’s Center for Health and Research Transformation surveyed over 29,000 Michigan physicians. About 85% of them said administrative and regulatory requirements were a significant source of workplace stress.

The widespread adoption of electronic health records over the past 25 years, which has improved some aspects of medical diagnosis and treatment, has also given doctors more administrative responsibilities. Doctors spend nearly two additional hours updating electronic health records or doing related administrative tasks for every hour they spend with patients, according to one estimate.

Keeping the records up to date can contribute to burnout.

Are doctors worried about job security?

In recent years, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have taken on responsibilities previously reserved for doctors. Nurse practitioners or physician assistants saw patients for about 1 in 4 medical appointments, according to a 2023 study, up from around 1 in 5 a decade earlier.

Given significant differences in compensation between physicians and other kinds of health care providers, this trend raises concerns about the potential for health care employers to employ fewer doctors to save money on staff salaries.

Separately, there are growing concerns about the potential for the use of artificial intelligence and automation to replace some of the tasks that doctors do today.

Can labor organizing harm patients?

In April 2025, the American College of Physicians, which has 160,000 members, released a position paper with recommendations for responsible collective bargaining for doctors.

This group felt compelled to encourage the ethical engagement of its members in the midst of labor organizing because their work is often lifesaving and can be dangerous to disrupt due to strikes or other labor actions.

No study has empirically evaluated whether a doctor’s union membership affects their patients’ health. However, a 2022 meta-analysis of 17 studies found no significant impact on death rates when health care workers go on strike.

Despite the potential benefits, some doctors remain concerned that unionization may create divides among physicians, interfere with their ability in some cases to negotiate directly with their employers, and add layers of bureaucracy that don’t do patients or medical professionals any good.

Do doctors ever go on strike?

It’s historically been rare in the U.S., but that could be changing.

In January 2025, 70 doctors who belong to the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association joined thousands of nurses in a strike against Portland, Oregon-based Providence Health after more than a year of failed contract negotiations.

The strike lasted 27 days, delaying some elective procedures and making some emergency room wait times longer. Some patients had to go to other hospitals. The agreement the hospital ultimately reached with physicians boosted pay, expanded sick leave and included a commitment to change staffing models.

In June 2025, picket lines formed outside of four Minnesota health clinics for the first time in the state’s history. Members of the Doctors Council SEIU union were protesting after more than 18 months of failed negotiations for a new contract. The doctors, who all work for the Allina Health chain of hospitals, health clinics and urgent care sites, are seeking higher compensation, smaller workloads and more support staff.

Although no timeline has been announced, union members have authorized a strike if negotiations continue to fail. As of early September 2025, those negotiations were ongoing.

Patrick Aguilar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Doctors are joining unions in a bid to improve working conditions and raise wages in a stressful health care system – https://theconversation.com/doctors-are-joining-unions-in-a-bid-to-improve-working-conditions-and-raise-wages-in-a-stressful-health-care-system-259232

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jeffers Engelhardt, Professor of Music, Amherst College

The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who turns 90 on Sept. 11, 2025, is one of the most frequently performed contemporary classical composers in the world. Beyond the concert stage and cathedral choir, Pärt’s music features heavily in film and television soundtracks: “There Will Be Blood,” “Thin Red Line” or “Wit,” for instance. It is often used to evoke profound emotions and transcendent spirituality.

Many Estonians grew up hearing the music Pärt wrote for children’s films and Estonian cinema classics in the 1960s and ‘70s. Popes and Orthodox patriarchs honor him, and Pärt’s music has received the highest levels of recognition, including Grammy Awards. In 2025, Pärt is being celebrated in Estonia, at Carnegie Hall and around the world.

Behind much of Pärt’s popularity – and his listeners’ devotion – is his engagement with sacred Christian texts and Orthodox Christian spirituality. Yet his music has inspired a broad range of artists and thinkers: Icelandic singer Björk, who admires its beauty and discipline; the theater artist Robert Wilson, who was drawn to its quality of time; and Christian theologians, who appreciate its “bright sadness.”

As a music scholar with expertise in Estonian music and Orthodox Christianity, and a longtime Pärt fan, I am fascinated by how Pärt’s exploration of Christian traditions – at once subtle and fervent – appeals to so many. How does this happen musically?

Tintinnabuli

Pärt emerged from a period of personal artistic crisis in 1976. In a now-legendary concert, he introduced the world to new music composed using a technique he invented called “tintinnabuli,” an onomatopoeic Latin word meaning “little bells.”

Tintinnabuli is music reduced to its elemental components: simple melodic lines derived from sacred Christian texts or mathematical designs and married to basic harmonies. As Pärt describes it, tintinnabuli is the benefit of reduction rather than complexity – freeing the elemental beauty of his music and the message of his texts.

This was a departure from Pärt’s earlier modernist and experimental music, and expressed a yearslong struggle to reconcile his newfound commitment to Orthodox Christianity and his rigorous artistic ideals. Pärt’s journey is documented in the dozens of notebooks he kept, beginning in the 1970s: religious texts, diary entries, drawings and ideas for musical compositions – a documentary trove of Christian musical creativity.

Tintinnabuli was inspired, in part, by Pärt’s interest in much earlier styles of Christian music, including Gregorian chant – the single-voice singing of Roman Catholicism – and Renaissance polyphony, which weaves together multiple melodic lines. Because of its associations with the church, this music was ideologically fraught in an anti-religious Soviet Estonia.

In Pärt’s notebooks from the 1970s, there are pages and pages of musical sketches where he works out early music-inspired approaches to texts and prayers – the seeds of tintinnabuli. The technique became his answer to existential creative questions: How can music reconcile human subjectivity and divine truths? How can a composer get out of the way, so to speak, to let the sounds of sacred texts resonate? How can artists and audiences approach music so that, to use Pärt’s famous expression, “every blade of grass has the status of a flower”?

In a 2003 conversation with the Italian musicologist Enzo Restagno, Pärt’s wife, Nora, offered an equation to understand how tintinnabuli works: 1+1 = 1.

The first element – the first “1” – is melody, as singer and conductor Paul Hillier lays out in his 1997 book on Pärt. Melody expresses a subjective experience of moving through the world. It centers around a given musical note: the “A” key on the piano, for instance.

The second element – the “+1” – is tintinnabuli itself: the presence of three pitches, sounding together as a bell-like halo: A, C, E.

Finally, the third element – the “= 1” – is the unity of melodic and tintinnabuli voices in a single sound, oriented around a central musical note.

Formulas

Here’s the crux of Arvo Pärt’s work: the relationship of 1+1, melody and harmony, is ordered not by moment-to-moment choices, but by formulas meant to magnify the sound and structure of sacred texts.

A simple tintinnabuli formula might go like this: If the melody rises four notes with four syllables of text, the notes of the tintinnabuli triad will follow beneath that line without overlapping. It supports and steers. Or if the melody falls five notes with five syllables of text, the notes of the tintinnabuli triad will alternate above and below that line to create a different musical texture – all organized around symmetry.

Pärt often lets the number of syllables in a word, the length of a phrase or verse, and the sound of a language shape his formulas. That is why Pärt’s music in English, with its many single-syllable words, consonant clusters and diphthongs, sounds one way. And that is why his music in Church Slavonic, the liturgical language for many Orthodox Christians, sounds another way.

Tintinnabuli is about simplicity and beauty. The genius of Pärt’s work is how his formulas feel like the musical expression of timeless truths. In a 1978 interview with the journalist Ivalo Randalu, Nora Pärt recalled what her husband once said about tintinnabuli’s formulas: “I know a great secret, but I know it only through music, and I can only express it through music.”

Silence

If this all seems coldly formulaic, it isn’t. There is a sensuousness to Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli music that connects with listeners’ bodily experience. Pärt’s formulas, born out of long, prayerful periods with sacred texts, offer beauty in the warmth and friction of relationships: melody and tintinnabuli, word and the limits of language, sounds and silence.

“For me, ‘silent’ means the ‘nothing’ from which God created the world,” Pärt told the Estonian musicologist Leo Normet in 1988. “Ideally, a silent pause is something sacred.”

Silence is a common trope in Pärt’s music – indeed, the second movement of his tintinnabuli masterpiece “Tabula rasa,” the title work on the 1984 ECM Records release that brought him to global attention, is “Silentium.”

Any sounding music is not silent, of course – and, in human terms, silence is largely metaphorical, since we cannot escape sound into the silence of absolute zero or a vacuum.

But Pärt’s silence is different. It is spiritual stillness communicated through his musical formulas but made sensible through the action of human performers. It is a composer’s silence as he gets out of the way of a sacred text’s musicality to communicate its truth. Without paradox, Pärt’s popularity today may well arise from the silence of his music.

Jeffers Engelhardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Sacred texts and ‘little bells’: The building blocks of Arvo Pärt’s musical masterpieces – https://theconversation.com/sacred-texts-and-little-bells-the-building-blocks-of-arvo-parts-musical-masterpieces-261519

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Villanova University

Philadelphia has once again been named one of the “asthma capitals” of the U.S. – ranking No. 4 in a report released on Sept. 9, 2025, by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Allentown was ranked No. 3, Harrisburg No. 15 and Pittsburgh No. 44.

The AAFA, which is the largest patient group in the country for people with asthma and allergies, ranks cities based on “how challenging they are to live in” for people with asthma. The ranking combines data on asthma prevalence rates, visits to the ER and deaths related to asthma.

Compared with 2024 data, Allentown’s ranking has improved: It went from No. 1, a position now occupied by Detroit, to No. 3. Philadelphia is doing worse, one place higher than in 2024.

I am a health law professor and the director of the Health Innovation Lab at Villanova University, where I have researched ways to make asthma medication more affordable for patients.

Here are some steps that individuals, schools and state leaders in Pennsylvania can take to reduce asthma triggers and the cost of asthma medications in their families and communities.

The September asthma peak in Pennsylvania

The ranking was published at an especially challenging time of the year for many asthma patients.

September is known as the “asthma peak month.” The third week of September typically registers the highest number of asthma attacks, as well as asthma-related hospital and ER visits, nationwide.

Asthma triggers include fall pollen and mold levels, which start increasing in the late summer and stay high through early fall.

Also contributing to the September asthma peak is poor indoor air quality, especially in older or poorly maintained school buildings where children are exposed to concentrated amounts of allergens and irritants.

A report released in August 2025 found that Pennsylvania schools face a variety of asthma triggers, such as exposure to radon, mold and lead paint. Yet, less than 4% of schools in Pennsylvania have an indoor air quality plan. The problem is especially acute in cities like Philadelphia, where many school buildings are over 70 years old and in disrepair.

Solving a problem as complex and widespread as asthma may require taking creative steps. These include initiatives led by schools and students. For example, students in Australia led a successful initiative to improve air quality around their schools by having parents cut down on engine idling time.

Affordable asthma medications

Asthma patients often need medication to manage their symptoms. Yet, over the past 15 years that medication has become increasingly unaffordable.

Last year, some pharmaceutical companies capped the price of their asthma inhalers at US$35 each.

But not all types of inhalers are covered. And other asthma medications, such as some drugs taken orally, remain unaffordable for many patients. Asthma drugs that are not subject to a price cap or other type of price control may cost patients thousands of dollars a year.

There are resources for asthma patients and parents of children with asthma that may help them save some money when filling their prescriptions. A good starting point is GoodRx, a free online platform that allows users to search and compare medication prices across pharmacies. The website currently lists 65 different types of asthma medication and their varying prices.

What Pennsylvania lawmakers can do

Since price caps don’t apply to all types of inhalers and asthma medication, states can pass legislation that imposes such caps, instead of relying solely on industry compliance. Before there was a federal Medicare price cap on insulin, several states took this route and implemented state caps.

Some states have now begun passing similar legislation for certain types of asthma medication. Minnesota, for instance, beginning Jan. 1, 2025, capped inhalers at $25, lower than the industry cap. Pennsylvania could follow suit and even consider asthma medication besides inhalers.

Pennsylvania can also address other facets of the asthma crisis. For instance, the state could offer funding or other incentives for schools to upgrade their ventilation systems or otherwise address poor indoor air quality.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia.

Ana Santos Rutschman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. New report ranks Philadelphia and Allentown among toughest cities in America for people with asthma – https://theconversation.com/new-report-ranks-philadelphia-and-allentown-among-toughest-cities-in-america-for-people-with-asthma-264084

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael Hales, Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Physical Education, Kennesaw State University

For athletes across all sports, few experiences are as agonizing as being forced to leave competition with a sudden muscle cramp. These painful, uncontrolled spasms – formally known as exercise-associated muscle cramps – have frustrated athletes, coaches and researchers for decades.

Scientists have traditionally attributed exercise-induced cramps to dehydration or electrolyte imbalances. However, this theory left unanswered questions. For example, many well-hydrated athletes experience cramps, while others competing in hot, humid conditions remain unaffected.

A growing body of research is challenging this explanation, pointing instead to the playing surface as a critical factor.

In my work as a sports scientist, I study how different variables affect athletic performance. Work from my team has found that specific qualities of playing surfaces can lead to early neuromuscular fatigue and unexpected muscle cramps.

Muscle cramps and playing surfaces

As muscles fatigue, the normal balance between signals in the nervous system that direct muscles to contract and relax become disrupted. Muscle spindles, which sense stretch, increase their firing rate. Meanwhile, inhibitory feedback from Golgi tendon organs – a part of the nervous system at the intersection of muscle fibers and tendons – declines.

In other words, muscles are getting mixed signals about whether to contract or relax. The result is excessive activation of motor neurons that stimulate muscle fibers into a sustained, involuntary contraction – a cramp.

Recent studies suggest that competing on surfaces with unfamiliar mechanical properties – such as stiffness and elasticity – can accelerate neuromuscular fatigue. Surfaces alter the mechanics of your muscles and joints. If your neuromuscular system is not accustomed to these demands, fatigue can prematurely set in and create the conditions for cramping.

In one study, my team and I found a 13% difference in muscle activity among runners performing on fields of varying stiffness and elasticity. Another study from my team found a 50% difference in hamstring activity among athletes performing identical drills on different types of turf.

Beyond sports-specific performance metrics, biomechanics research has long shown that altering the properties of playing surfaces changes muscle stiffness, joint loading and range of motion. These variables directly affect fatigue. Muscles crossing multiple joints such as the hamstrings appear especially vulnerable to variations in playing surfaces, given their central role in sprinting and cutting.

Preventing cramps during exercise

If playing surfaces influence fatigue, then managing how they interact with players could help prevent cramps.

Researchers have proposed developing regional databases cataloging the mechanical characteristics of competition surfaces for sports such as tennis. With this data, coaches and sports organizations could tailor training environments to mimic competitive conditions, reducing the shock of unfamiliar surfaces. It’s not necessarily the inherent properties of the surface that causes cramping, but rather how similar or different they are from what an athlete is used to.

Consider a soccer team that practices on a soft surface but competes on a more stiff surface. Without preparation, the shift in how their muscles will be used may lead to premature fatigue and cramps during competition. By incorporating drills that replicate how athletes’ muscles will be activated on competition turf could help the team better prepare for game conditions.

Similarly, a basketball team accustomed to new hardwood may benefit from training sessions on worn or cushioned courts that simulate upcoming away venues.

The key is systematic exposure. Conditioning on surfaces that replicate competitive demands acclimatizes the neuromuscular system, lowering fatigue risk and potentially reducing the risk of cramps.

Toward a holistic approach to cramps

Hydration and nutrition remain essential for performance. But accounting for conditioning, footwear traction and adaptation to different playing surfaces could help sports medicine move toward a more complete solution to exercise-associated muscle cramps.

With continued research and technology development, cramps may no longer need to be a frustrating inevitability. Instead, athletes and coaches could anticipate them, adjust training to match surface demands, and take steps to prevent them before they derail performance.

The future of cramp prevention may lie in real-time monitoring. Advances in a combination of wearable biosensors to detect neuromuscular fatigue, surface testing equipment and machine learning could help predict individualized cramp risk. Coaches might then adjust practice plans, make in-game substitutions or even adapt surface conditions when possible.

By better preparing athletes for the mechanical demands of competition surfaces, teams may protect their athletes’ health and ensure top performers are available when the game is on the line.

Michael Hales does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What causes muscle cramps during exercise? Athletes and coaches may want to look at the playing surface – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-muscle-cramps-during-exercise-athletes-and-coaches-may-want-to-look-at-the-playing-surface-262619

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sonja Fritzsche, Senior Associate Dean and Professor of German Studies, Michigan State University

In “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI,” the futurist Ray Kurzweil imagines the point in 2045 when rapid technological progress crosses a threshold as humans merge with machines, an event he calls “the singularity.”

Although Kurzweil’s predictions may sound more like science fiction than fact-based forecasting, his brand of thinking goes well beyond the usual sci-fi crowd. It has provided inspiration for American technology industry elites for some time, chief among them Elon Musk.

With Neuralink, his company that is developing computer interfaces implanted in people’s brains, Musk says he intends to “unlock new dimensions of human potential.” This fusion of human and machine echoes Kurzweil’s singularity. Musk also cites apocalyptic scenarios and points to transformative technologies that can save humanity.

Ideas like those of Kurzweil and Musk, among others, can seem as if they are charting paths into a brave new world. But as a humanities scholar who studies utopianism and dystopianism, I’ve encountered this type of thinking in the futurist and techno-utopian art and writings of the early 20th century.

Techno-utopianism’s origins

Techno-utopianism emerged in its modern form in the 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution ushered in a set of popular ideas that combined technological progress with social reform or transformation.

Kurzweil’s singularity parallels ideas from Italian and Russian futurists amid the electrical and mechanical revolutions that took place at the turn of the 20th century. Enthralled by inventions like the telephone, automobile, airplane and rocket, those futurists found inspiration in the concept of a “New Human,” a being who they imagined would be transformed by speed, power and energy.

A century ahead of Musk, Italian futurists imagined the destruction of one world, so that it might be replaced by a new one, reflecting a common Western techno-utopian belief in a coming apocalypse that would be followed by the rebirth of a changed society.

One especially influential figure of the time was Filippo Marinetti, whose 1909 “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” offered a nationalistic vision of a modern, urban Italy. It glorified the tumultuous transformation caused by the Industrial Revolution. The document describes workers becoming one with their fiery machines. It encourages “aggressive action” coupled with an “eternal” speed designed to break things and bring about a new world order.

The overtly patriarchal text glorifies war as “hygiene” and promotes “scorn for woman.” The manifesto also calls for the destruction of museums, libraries and universities and supports the power of the rioting crowd.

Marinetti’s vision later drove him to support and even influence the early fascism of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. However, the relationship between the futurism movement and Mussolini’s increasingly anti-modern regime was an uneasy one, as Italian studies scholar Katia Pizzi wrote in “Italian Futurism and the Machine.”

Further east, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 adopted a utopian faith in material progress and science. They combined a “belief in the ease with which culture could be destroyed” with the benefits of “spreading scientific ideas to the masses of Russia,” historian Richard Stites wrote in “Revolutionary Dreams.”

For the Russian left, an “immediate and complete remaking” of the soul was taking place. This new proletarian culture was personified in the ideal of the New Soviet Man. This “master of nature by means of machines and tools” received a polytechnical education instead of the traditional middle-class pursuit of the liberal arts, humanities scholar George Young wrote in “The Russian Cosmists.” The first Soviet People’s Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, supported these movements.

Although their political ideologies took different forms, these 20th-century futurists all focused their efforts on technological advancement as an ultimate objective. Techno-utopians were convinced that the dirt and pollution of real-world factories would automatically lead to a future of “perfect cleanliness, efficiency, quiet, and harmony,” historian Howard Segal wrote in “Technology and Utopia.”

Myths of efficiency and everyday tech

Despite the remarkable technological advances of that time, and since, the vision of those techno-utopians largely has not come to pass. In the 21st century, it can seem as if we live in a world of near-perfect efficiency and plenitude thanks to the rapid development of technology and the proliferation of global supply chains. But the toll that these systems take on the natural environment – and on the people whose labor ensures their success – presents a dramatically different picture.

Today, some of the people who espouse techno-utopian and apocalyptic visions have amassed the power to influence, if not determine, the future. At the start of 2025, through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk introduced a fast-paced, tech-driven approach to government that has led to major cutbacks in federal agencies. He’s also influenced the administration’s huge investments in artificial intelligence , a class of technological tools that public officials are only beginning to understand.

The futurists of the 20th century influenced the political sphere, but their movements were ultimately artistic and literary. By contrast, contemporary techno-futurists like Musk lead powerful multinational corporations that influence economies and cultures across the globe.

Does this make Musk’s dreams of human transformation and societal apocalypse more likely to become reality? If not, these elements of Musk’s project are likely to remain more theoretical, just as the dreams of last century’s techno-utopians did.

Sonja Fritzsche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Techno-utopians like Musk are treading old ground: The futurism of early 20th-century Europe – https://theconversation.com/techno-utopians-like-musk-are-treading-old-ground-the-futurism-of-early-20th-century-europe-259367